What do you get if you mix the ingredients of Timothée Chalamet’s star power, the heartmelting genius of the writer-director of Paddington, the blockbuster worldbuilding of Harry Potter’s producer and the source material of literary legend Roald Dahl? The filmmakers behind the musical origin story of Wonka tell Total Film how they mapped a way to pure imagination…
It’s something of a thrill to enter the hallowed doors of Abbey Road Studios in St John’s Wood and walk in the same footsteps as some of music’s greatest icons to Studio One, the cavernous recording space where Elgar’s symphonies and the soundtracks of The Lord of the Rings, Bond and Star Wars have reverberated (Studio Two next door was used by The Beatles). But the shiver of delight really comes when you hear the rich swell of music dancing around the wood-panelled walls and ceiling from a full orchestra – especially when they’re playing the lilting, haunting notes of Pure Imagination. The central ditty of 1971’s classic kids’ film, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, it’s sung by Gene Wilder’s quixotic confectioner as he introduces a gaggle of kids to his edible wonderland, and has become an embodiment for cornucopian flights of fancy and the power of dreaming (little wonder an entertainment service recently used it on its ads).
It’s late May and the strikes are only a possibility at this point – composer Joby Talbot and songwriter Neil Hannon are hovering nearby to see their compositions for a new iteration of Wonka come to life under the skilled hands of orchestrator and conductor, Jeremy Holland-Smith. As scenes from the movie play on screens in the room, the gathered session musicians (who haven’t seen the sheet music before they arrive) settle to follow Holland- Smith’s baton and create sinister creeping interludes (strings), peppy, bright moments (upper wind section) and that soaring theme for recording technicians to capture. It’s one of the later post-production steps in a journey that began with producer David Heyman – he of Potter fame – when he became friends with Roald Dahl’s widow, Liccy, and began discussing the possibilities of Dahl’s estate on celluloid. The writer’s work had been a big part of his own childhood (‘I was obsessed with Switch Bitch’) and a formative part of what made Rowling’s Potter stories first appeal.
‘In a way, loving Dahl was one of the beginnings of my interest in Harry Potter,’ he smiles when we catch up with him between meetings in August. ‘There’s a connection. It’s family but there’s an irreverence to them. There’s a sense of mischief and play which I really enjoy.’ Dahl also forged new connections for Heyman – ‘I once went for dinner at [Da
